February’s Good News & Good Reads

(News, reviews, happenings, and readings from our Porkbelly poets & authors)

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Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the Middle of the Night (Porkbelly Press, 2015) by E. Kristin Anderson » www.ekristinanderson.com

  • EKA’s poem “Jumping the Fuck Shark” appears in the new Tinderbox Poetry Journal.
  • another erasure, “The light fell in,” appears in Cotton Xenomorph.
  • Come As You Are (Anomalous Press, 2018), an anthology of 90s pop culture, edited by EKA, is just out!
  • Her new chapbook, Seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press, 2018), is available.
  • Other achievements, including a chapbook, are listed in her latest blog post!

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The Autobiography of a Love Not Mine (Porkbelly Press, 2014)
by Hilda Weaver

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A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Amorak Huey » amorakhuey.net

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Ghost Skin (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Wren Hanks » tumblr

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Set the Garden on Fire (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Chen Chen » chenchenwrites.com

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Love Me, Anyway (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Minadora Macheret

  • Minadora’s poem “Baba Yaga: Her Almost Origin Story” from Bramble & Thorn (Porkbelly Press, 2017) is nominated for a Rhysling Award.

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Feeding the Dead (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by M. Brett Gaffney « blog

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Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, Fallen into the Bay (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Sarah Ann Winn » bluebirdwords.com

  • Work in Come As You Are (Anomalous Press, 2018), an anthology of 90s pop culture edited by E. Kristin Anderson.

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Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly Press, 2018) & How Darkness Enters a Body (Porkbelly Press, 2018) by Sarah Nichols » @onibaba37

  • Work in Come As You Are (Anomalous Press, 2018), an anthology of 90s pop culture edited by E. Kristin Anderson.

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My Own Strange Beast (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by Melissa Atkinson Mercer

  • Kanika Lawton interviews Melissa about her new collection, Knock (Half Mystic Press, 2018).
  • Featured on Sundress Publications’ The Wardrobe!

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Bodies in Water (Porkbelly Press, 2014)
by P. Andrew Miller » pandrewmiller.com

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Vein of Stone (Porkbelly Press, 2014)
by Sarah McCartt-Jackson » sarahmccarttjackson.com

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Says the Forest to the Girl (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Sally Rosen Kindred » sallyrosenkindred.com

  • We’ve accepted Says the Forest to the Girl, a chapbook of poetry, for our 2018 line of chaps!

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Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Sara Ryan » sararryan.com

  • We’ve accepted Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned, a chapbook of poetry & creative nonfiction, for our 2018 line of chaps!

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Light Experiments (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Madeleine Barnes » madeleinebarnes.com

  • We’ve accepted Light Experiments, our very first chapbook of photography, for our 2018 line of chaps!

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Bodies in Water & Vein of Stone (open edition)

We’re pleased to present you with a first look at the open edition covers of two of our titles. These covers are inkjet printed on matte professional photo paper & feature hand-cut title flags, typewritten on recycled (100% PCW) paper. Each varies slightly.

Bodies in Water Cover Art

“No River Like Craving” (oil, 36 x 48 inches) by Angie Reed Garner.
Garner is a second-generation narrative painter from Kentucky. www.angiereedgarner.com

Vein of Stone Cover Art

“I Was Listening” (collagraph & monotype, 15 x 22 inches) by Kathleen Piercefield.
Piercefield is a Kentucky based printmaker and fine artist. www.kpiercefield.com

 

Bodies in Water and Vein of Stone are available via Etsy.
Special edition copies (screen printed covers) may also be available. Please check our Porkbelly Press shop section.

Stay tuned for a look at our first micro chapbooks & other titles.

Give me the rope…

Give me the rope
that you tied around my finger, wild grapevine warped into a loop. Give
me your face, your hands cupping my breasts, your shoes filled with your mud
and feet. Give us your crooked back aching, your owl-lidded eyes, your breath
in our ears, our handplanes, our spindles, our hums, our ladles, and we will give you back
your money, your ring, your footprints in the corn, your tart apples picked
from your tree that make your mouth and tongue water.
your Ora

A sample of Sarah McCartt-Jackson‘s poetry from Vein of Stone (forthcoming this month). | pre-order

preview: Vein of Stone | off the press in late July

Vein of Stone (Sarah McCartt-Jackson) is our first offering of Appalachian poetry. This chapbook of poems sifts through the life of a family in coal country, primarily via a series of letters from three voices. It calls to mind land full of limestone and sweet magnolia blossoms along a buffalo trace. | $10 | available in late July.

Pictured here are the covers awaiting end papers and finished guts. Pulled by hand (screen prints), these covers are printed in 2 colors on 65# stock (the kraft brown is 100% recycled, 20% PCW). The special edition release is limited to 75 hand-numbered, handsewn copies.

We were first introduced to Sarah’s poetry via her submission to Sugared Water lit mag’s Epistolary (a special edition of letters and letter-poems). She captured our ears and minds with her weaving of culture and language nestled in with little bits of folklore—she reaches down again and again to mine up the story of this family—what’s left of them in absence of each other—and she shows us how they’re marked like a body taking on coal dust with each breath.

Below is a sample from the chapbook, a selection of two stanzas from “Kentucky Rose,” the opening poem:

Five days and a riverside away from his wife Ora, Eli knows the rain
by whether or not his ankles slap through coalwater,
whether the sludgy drip of soil-seep oils his palm.

And when the earthhush of that shaft struggles to slip from the blue
shale stitched above the carbon, the sound becomes the rasp
of a carpenter bee’s mandibles boring tunnels
into the porchwood to remove its yellow poplar
grain by grain, gram by spittled gram.

About the poet:

Recently chosen as artist-in-residence for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for its 2014-2015 season, Kentucky poet Sarah McCartt-Jackson has spent decades developing her craft, dedicating her art to exploring the natural and cultural world that encompasses all who share in planet life. Through poetry, she endeavors to inspire others to connect, reflect, meditate, and act for the future of our ecosystems of all sizes: valley, prairie, forest, fern. As a poet, naturalist, and folklorist, McCartt-Jackson interprets scapes (landscape, homescape, culturescape) in both traditional and contemporary ways. Her poetry allows for enriched understanding for ideas to feather into a central locus, exploring the diversity of biological and cultural life and profound experience rooted in sanctuary and wilderness. Her work has been published by and received honors from the Academy of American Poets, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, Copper Nickel, Indiana Review, Journal of American Folklore, Tidal Basin Review, and others.

Some of the poems from this chapbook originally appeared in: The Fourth River, Friends of Acadia Journal, Indiana Review, Redheaded Stepchild, and Sugared Water.